by Norman I. Platnick.
It's back -- and better! It's been out of print for the past two years, but Enchantment Ink is pleased to introduce a brand-new, full-color version 5.0 of "The Fade-Away Lady: A Collector's Guide to Coles Phillips and Valentine Sandberg." By far the most comprehensive work ever produced on Coles Phillips, "The Fade-Away Lady" includes almost 500 color (plus over 100 B&W) images. Included are every known magazine cover, magazine illustration, advertisement, postcard, poster stamp, book, book illustration, calendar, print, blotter, trolley car sign, poster, etc., by both Phillips and Valentine Sandberg (probably the best of the many contemporary imitators of Phillips' fade-away style). The 184 8.5x11, velo-bound pages include a comprehensive ad identifier (allowing individual ad page tear-sheets to be identified by their source magazine), and a detailed index/price guide. New in this version are some terrific recent discoveries, including the only known yard long print by Phillips! Reviews of the earlier, B&W versions of this book in the Antique Trader and Antique Week said: "As a source for the works of Coles Phillips, this book is unmatched. ... The extensive listings make this book an essential part of any collector's library." Now it's bigger, better, and in color!
Click here to download this guide, for free.
Hello Enchantment Ink visitor. On April 8th, 2020, the author of all these books, my father, Norman Platnick, died of complications due to a serious fall.
Words cannot describe the amount of pain my family is in right now. My father was a wonderful, humble, loving, passionate and intelligent man. He had 3 passions in life: my mother, spiders and collecting.
As a way of honoring my father's legacy in the illustrated artwork community, I will be turning as many books of his as possible into PDF files and distributing them online, for free.
If you have found these collector's guides useful, I ask that you make a donation to the Norman I. Platnick Memorial Fund, which will be setting up a scholarship in the field of arachnology, my father's career.
If you'd like to learn more about my father and his amazing life (such as skipping middle school and high school and going to college when he was 12), I'd like to lift up just a few pieces:
NY Times: Norman Platnick ObituaryConcord University Magazine Fall 2018: Friendly Neighbordhood Arachnologist page 20
NY Times: The Exciting Adventures of Spider Man
Daily News: NYC'S real-life spider man
NY Times: For Some, an Appliance; for Others, Art
The Wall Street Journal: Warming Up to Spiders